


Forest-Child

by ProwlingThunder



Series: Every Word a Promise [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demon Summoners, Body Possession, Demon Summoner AU, Demons, Forest Spirits, Gen, M/M, Pre-Vault, Riding, Spirit Contracts, Spirits, fae, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 06:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7607329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is careful: he never says yes.</p><p>He doesn't have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forest-Child

He is aware, as a child, that he is different from other people. It's not hard to figure out.

The woods behind the estate are large and beautiful and he plays in them constantly, following the unsung sounds of a piper in the woods, always coming back home in the end. Artem watches him, a little, when it starts. Artem bares his teeth at the woods occasionally, he says things in Russian that Silas has not yet learned, but the tone carries the threat through the crowns and the leaves rustle back, the shadows darker than midnight.

His skin is pale and crystal-shot, and he stands like a gemstone in the light. Eventually, he releases Silas to the care of the woods.

"You are like me, young Silas, and you must be very careful for it."

He is different from others: but he does not know what he  _ is. _

The woods welcome him anyway. In the summer it is warm beneath the boughs, the trees stretch out their branches, they keep him safe and welcoming and he knows all he has to do is come back to the woods, eventually. He has to play with them, in them; he has to make them feel useful.

Sometimes, he thinks he sees the piper out of the corner of his eye; he's tall and always just out of sight, dancing through the trees with him, laughing.  _ Come play, come play, little forest-child, _ he sings, and Silas remembers his mother's stories when he was small, of spirits in the woods and streams and stones.  _ Come play with me, and be mine for a while, _ and he thinks of the stories they're learning in school, of the trickster Puck and the fairy-king.

He is careful: he never says  _ yes. _

In high-school he takes an elective, because he can; because he'll be a soldier like his father, and police and fire-fighters and soldiers, all of them, have to take it: The Veil, Demonology 101, alternatively titled "What we know about demons."

Turns out to be: Not a lot.

"At the beginning of the nuclear age, mankind became aware that it was not alone in this world," the teacher begins, and it's a careful thing, rehearsed, because everything in the world, or almost everything, is powered off nuclear energy.

He doesn't like the class as much as he likes, and puts a call in with his cousins that he'd really like it if he could talk to Grandfather Zelenko, when he could, because the school had it Wrong but when he tried about talk it to Artem, the Russian had furrowed his brow and admitted that he had no idea what a demon  _ was. _

Grandfather Zelenko didn't either.

Or, rather, he did: people could call them what they liked, other names in other places, and Grandfather insisted not to call them demons unless they  _ asked, _ but they had always been there, apparently, just outside the perceptions of most. And then he gave Silas a soft smile and an affectionate hug, and he promised that if he were kind to those spirits, then they too would be kind to him.

They had prices; there were spirits that went around stealing or mending shoes, and provided you left saucers of milk out for them, there were some who would chase away mice and roaches and other pest creatures for him.

Artem lingered in the doorway when Grandfather said it, his skin whiter than it should have been, and Silas realized then what he had known but never acknowledged; Artem was a summoner, and a spirit lived beneath his skin.

"Some spirits ride," Grandfather agreed, looking up at the Russian himself. "Some don't. Some spirits burn out people, but they all have pacts to call on, and prices that the humans must pay for their aid. What was yours?"

"Survival," he says simply, and then he motions at Silas. "Let Matvey and I talk. You have not been to the woods in a while."

He hasn't. Silas leaves them to their discussion to go running in the woods, casting off his school jacket and his shirt in favor of bare skin. Nothing in the woods would hurt him, as long as he was there, as long as he came back and made it feel useful; and nothing was as comforting as running through the woods as his ancestors must have, nude as the day he was born, but it was too much trouble to kick off his shoes and work out of his belt and pants, and his grandfather was visiting, besides.

He could hear the woods better now, growing up in them; he could differentiate the voices from each other. They sing-songed to him, luring him in to forget, and he ran for them, feeling them chase over his flesh in leaves and grabbing fingers.

Woods are a thing that is alive, never fail. Even in the winter time when it slumbers, even when the voices within are quiet and less active, they are never not there. He knows them, and they know him, and he remembers like a dream:

These are his woods and he knows them like his own bones, and he thinks it odd none of them ever offered to make a pact with him. All it would take is a little blood...

_ I'm not offering anything I have. I'm offering you something I don't for something I want. _

_ You tell me it's not a good deal. I'll already be paying your price. I'll be protecting something. _

_ It's not like you won’t still feed from me. There's only one thing that will change here. _

But he already has a pact with someone, somewhere, doesn't he? And he can feel the pang in his chest because he misses her, and she's gone but her pact remains. The contract binds him tighter than any iron.

Puck grins at him from the edges of his perceptions, the corner of his eye; Silas does not turn to look. What they have in common is that they are the same. The difference is that he can feed himself now.


End file.
